The posts have a point so it's an opportunity to improve PHP. What I personally like about PHP is that it's simple and similar to C/C++ in syntax. I do miss a number of things like overloading member functions.
I always liked the way the manual was, it has become less useful over the years imho. When I wanted to embed PHP as a scripting language a few years back there was NO documentation about it at all, only one book and only a short paragraph in that book about it.
It really isn't a matter if PHP sucks, it's a matter of how you deal with criticism and what you will do to improve it. I love PHP but there is room for improvement.

I disagree with Manuel here. One thing is saying that PHP sucks and other saying that there is room for improvement. There's no point in saying that PHP sucks, those who say that most surely are using it for the wrong needs or are like those Linux or Mac fanatics that hate Windows and can't deal with its existance, but denying that PHP has flaws and there is room for improvement is not very objective.

I also disagree when you say that if I -say- something could be improved in PHP, then I have to write a proposal and send the code, otherwise I should better shut up. ¿So only those who have the skills to write a proposal and write code for the core of PHP have the right to talk about it? And like if the core team was going to pay attention, it is so hard to contribute to PHP that some ex-members have left because of this, here is an example: http://pooteeweet.org/blog/1753

I think you have misunderstood what I said. I never said you cannot complain about missing features. That is one of the things we have been doing practically every month we record the podcast.

What I mean is that just complaining PHP sucks for the lack of a certain feature will not lead you anywhere because complaints will not make code magically be written by itself.

Somebody has to volunteer and write code to implement missing features. This is the same with all Open Source projects. It is all done by volunteers. They do only what they feel PHP needs. They will not do what you feel is needed just because you complain. They would need to sacrifice their time to do something that they may not feel it is necessary.

You may not be able to write a C code to implement a feature but anybody that knows English can write a proposal for a feature. That is more constructive and effective than just complaining.

As for the complaints of Lukas Smith, those are well known and reflect the general sentiment of the PHP community. You can write proposals for features but 1) you need to convince the proposal voters that the feature is really good to have, 2) you have to convince somebody to write the features code if you cannot do it yourself.

All this boil to politics. If you feel you are right to complain about missing features, you should invest in defending your beliefs among those that can make your wishes happen.

It may be frustrating that you will have an hard time succeeding, but that is part of the meritocracy regime that PHP development runs on.